ROMA VOICES

ABOUT ROMA VOICES

By Hedda Krausz Sjögren

Roma Voices is a documentary drama commissioned by the Swedish government coordinator for Roma Inclusion.

It premiered on June 1, 2016 at the national conference on the first four years of working with the national strategy for inclusion of Roma. It aims at creating engagement among primarily officials on government and municipal level and dialogue between Roma and non-Roma.

Roma people in Sweden is a diverse group, which has suffered severely under discrimination, abuse and exclusion. In 2012 the Swedish government adopted a 20-year strategy for inclusion of Roma into society and began the work on a White Paper (Vitbok) of the abuses against Roma committed by the state during the 20th century.

Roma is recognized among the 5 national Swedish minority groups alongside for example the Jewish and Sami people.

Roma Voices documents the stories of five individuals and how the strategy has affected their lives. The stories reflect the dreams and aspirations of any individual, and yet, subtle and not so subtle treatment by friends, colleagues and government agencies remind the protagonists that they belong to a stigmatized group.